New Delhi: In a bid to defend the Prime Minister's speech on Saturday, December 9, at the National Development Council and rebut critics, Minister for Panchayati Raj, Mani Shankar Aiyar, has conceded that "there may be scope for improving the grammar and the language" of Dr Manmohan Singh's speech.
In an interview to Karan Thapar in CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate, the Minister, who is also the author of a book called Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist, was closely questioned about the language used by the Prime Minister and its meaning as well as the subsequent clarification issued by the Prime Minister's Office.
The key issue was who the Prime Minister meant when he said : "They must have the first claim on resources".
Here are excerpts from the interview:
Mani Shankar Aiyar: "I am not the speech writer. I am also not the writer of clarificatory statements. While there may be scope for improving the grammar and the language, let's get to the substance of the issue."
Karan Thapar: You concede that the language and the grammar were not as good and clear as they could have been?
Mani Shankar Aiyar: "Well, yes."
Karan Thapar: You concede that?
Mani Shankar Aiyar: "Oh yes. Yes."
Karan Thapar: The PMO clarification didn't, but you concede it?
Mani Shankar Aiyar: I'm not the preparer of the clarificatory statement."
Elsewhere in the interview, albeit light heartedly, the Minister, who in the 1980s was Rajiv Gandhi's speech writer, said, "Perhaps the Prime Minister should have the kind of speech writer that Rajiv Gandhi had."
However, the Panchayati Raj Minister said that the controversy that had arisen around the PM's speech was "contrived". As he put it, "I really don't think that there is any cause for this storm of controversy. It's a contrived storm."
When it was pointed out to the Minister that practically every newspaper had interpreted the Prime Minister to mean that minorities and, in particular, Muslims had a first claim on resources rather than the wider category mentioned in the PMO clarification and that several Cabinet ministers, such as A R Antulay and Kapil Sibal, had come to the same conclusion as well, he replied:
"They were doing it because there was a time context in addition to a word context. The Sachar Committee report had just come out and it had revealed a very disturbing truth about our society. The PM's reference, even if it was to Muslims, was to an issue that I think we need to address, that there is a disadvantaged group in the country."
In the interview Mani Shankar Aiyar explicitly clarified what he claimed was the Prime Minister's intention in the speech to the National Development Council :
"I want to make it completely clear that the PM intended to include all the disadvantaged groups and it was appropriate that special attention should be given to one of these disadvantaged groups whose extent of disadvantage had just been brought into the public realm by an extraordinarily important report presented by Justice Sachar."
Later in the interview the Panchayati Raj Minister was specifically asked if the Government believed that India's minorities and, particularly, Muslims had a first claim on resources and, in his reply, he said that alongside several other social categories they had "a priority claim on resources". We give below an extract from this part of the interview :
Karan Thapar: "Does the government believe that India's minorities and, particularly, within that category Muslims, have a first claim on resources?"
Mani Shankar Aiyar: "They are among the several social categories who ought to have a priority claim on resources by virtue of the fact that the Sachar Committee was set up to ascertain what their economic and social status was and what their representation was in Government service and the report throws up two very interesting facets. On the one hand they really are a deprived community on several different indices and, secondly, there has been some success in pulling a substantial number of Muslims above the poverty line but still leaving them extremely poor."
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